


mother, oh mother of lies come close

by nachttour



Series: Oh Mother [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Eldren, Exandria campaign setting, Gen, Gore, I'm really serious about the OCs, Manipulation, Original Character - Freeform, Post-Campaign, Post-Campaign 1 (Critical Role), Revenge, getting better kicking and screaming the whole way, multiple generations post campaign, plot offroading, speculation about game mechanics, there are so many, time-jump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-01-20 17:44:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18530002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: Cracking the shell holding her was the first victory that she ever had attained. Straining against things wrapped around her tight like a vice and the depthless moist darkness before waking, Raishan pressed her face into the frigid air and piercing light and screamed.  Having managed the terrible, glorious task of being born, everything else lay at her clawtips to seize.-In which an arch-druid brings a nemesis back on what is essentially an overblown escort mission. Of course it is not as simple as all of that.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you all, but I love a good, complex villain. What do I like even more than that? When they are hauled kicking and screaming into gray almost-heroic morality. I had hoped that Vox Machina might have made a longer ally out of Raishan. Make her earn that redemption. However, there were other adventures to be had, and now we are here. There will be some new faces and some old faces. Let me know what you think and what's working for you.
> 
> There is a cast list [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997528)

Cracking the shell holding her was the first victory that she ever had attained. Straining against things wrapped around her tight like a vice and the depthless moist darkness before waking, Raishan pressed her face into the frigid air and piercing light and screamed. Having managed the terrible, glorious task of being born, everything else lay at her clawtips to seize.

Two siblings joined her that day. One did not leave their birth-detritus. Discarded pieces of shell framed their tiny body, like flower-petals. The other, a sister, was the first nemesis that she conquered. The crunch of her neck under Raishan’s jaws had seemed like the sound of thunder, the sound of the universe slotting into place.

Years later, she wondered at the wisdom of leaving them in proximity to one-another. Perhaps a parent had sat close-by, watching and waiting to see who would emerge victorious. Having never coupled to produce eggs, she could not say for sure that she would not have done the same.

If it had been different she could have had an ally, or a servant. A companion… if only for a while. A weak dragon was a dead dragon. From the time that she killed her sibling, weakness was not an option that she tolerated or allowed.

With that will, with luck, she grew. At first tiny like a rabbit and equally as frightened she jammed herself into the close places between boulders. She dodged basilisks, wolves, and other predators. When it came time to fight, she did so with everything in her, arching her back high like a bridge and digging her teeth and claws as deep as they would pierce.

Nothing could be held back. To hesitate would signal death, ever lingering, to come closer to her. 

She grew. Body growing long and supple. She grew big enough that the wolves that had harried her in turn began to be harried. Those things that had stalked her hid and bolted at the sound of her footsteps. The acrid smell of piss and sweat mixed in with the chorus of panting exertion as things ran from her.

Not all of them were successful in their flight.

Blood mixed into the perfume of her hunts as a dominant scent.

Her father comes to her when she reaches her tenth year as a wyrmling. He teaches her other shapes, pulling her squealing and baying into other forms that are alien to her. The transformations are not beautiful or fluid, not like they will be when she is older. They stretch and strain her muscles, her scales crack and so do her bones. More often than not she lays in an exhausted heap in the grass, blood trickling slow and purple from her snout.

They sit together in the floor of her lair, minimally adorned only with animal hide and blood-ruined trinkets stolen from travelers after their sinew and bone have fed her. He pulls out scrolls and charcoal, feather quills, from things that are much larger than she has ever hunted and he teaches her words.

Language seeps into her mind like light and she revels in it, drinks all that he offers her down greedily. Part of her knows that he will not dally long, and that this offering will come later with a price. Perhaps it is offered on a whim, or as downpayment for later service. Her mind is small and simple, but it starts to conceive of these things because it is the shape of the world.

There is no one else like her, nor will she tolerate them to stay close. This elder male, with eyes the same citron-ringed green as her own, gives her the tools to sharpen her wit as well as her body into killing tools. He never touches her, never stays longer than the day. Instead, he comes and goes in different faces, giving her a template for how one may pass in a world filled with soft, bipedal things.

The only tangible gift that he gives her is a mantle made of the skin of her mother. His mouth tips upward and the words echo in her ears, centuries old but true as ever. 

“Wrap her around you and use her as a tool to step to greatness. Our skin, our scales, and our bones and bodies are used as weapons and totems. Don’t let them debase you and portion your corpse out, Raishan.”

Leaving her a legacy, a warning, and a name, he departs.

She does not see him again. 

She grows. She learns. She sharpens herself into a more perfect tool for killing. Much like their high mother, like Tiamat, she will reign resplendent. Anything less than that will not do.

~*~


	2. Part I: set your feet to the ground and force your rotten bones to the task of motion : I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Raishan awakens outside of the context that she last was familiar with. (Repost with edits.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the repost! There is updated information in this chapter and I'm finagling some of the tenses. Please know that this is a big and fussy WIP so there will occasionally be some shuffling. I'll try not to do major alterations though, unless really necessary!

“Wake up, bitch.”

Everything smelled _incorrect_. There were leaves beneath her. The last instance of waking had been wandering Opesh’s lab. The cool stone of the subterranean space had been unyielding against the throbbing soreness of her whole body following her fight with Vox Machina. There had been the extra strain of hauling the dethroned Cinder King along with her, and the radiant pulsing heat of the whelps in their shells. The whole experience had been a host of unpleasantries. At no point had she been anywhere near a forest like this. 

Bits and pieces of the conflict flitted through her thoughts like motes of dust in sunlight. The tiny idiots of Vox Machina scuttling around at her feet. Fire pressing into all of the tender and thin places in her hide. The incredible pressure of jaws around her body. The idle-minded, stupid animal, cursing and screaming at them as his grandeur crumbled. The druid, staring up at her with prey-wide eyes and splattered in the gore of her teammates, weaving spellcraft into the air that made everything go hazy. 

The fingers were still there even if all other things had faded away. They remained, stubborn, cold, and immobile as they had been since they sunk into her. The ghost was a touchstone of normalcy in the blur of everything else. Somewhere in her second century she realized that the ghost was inside of her. Not simply lingering, not exacting vengeance for a handful of ants from a close proximity; but instead hidden away where she could not be interrupted at her spectral work of taking Raishan apart, tiny piece by tiny piece. 

It had required an impressive parade of clerics and other arcanists to test that hypothesis. The rot had seeped into her muscles and bones, dissolving her from the inside. The curse was not just letters, not just rites and components. There was something inside of her, festering like a worm in her gut. 

It had long been her assumption that it was a simple thing— to break a spirit. If the idiot was stupid enough to curse her, then it could not find fault in her further destruction of it. It was a principled thing to do, to die for a cause. A terribly mammalian thing to do. She suffered under no such delusions that anything would ever sway her to such lengths. 

The site of her waking smelled like the home she hatched to. It was not the the Verdant Expanse — the subtleties are wrong and her home never contained the stench of humans in such volume.

“Raishan.”

Like a needle between the joints her her talons the voice pushed into her head, adding to the thudding ever-present migraine behind her eyes. There was nothing for it but to see who had summoned her. Peeking through one of the protective membranes of her lids, Raishan sighed. 

It would have to be her.

Wreathed in a rain of slowly fluttering leaves, her nemesis waited. The birch in the area were shedding them like petals, causing the rain of foliage. Judging by the bite in the air it was getting toward the harvest celebrations. What a time to be called back from a long, dark dreaming standoff where she slowly crumbled like a burnt out log in a fire. Perhaps given long enough there would just be the shape of her in the other planes, glittering with embers of the memory of her life, until the right touch sent even the memory of her into the void of Tharizdun’s realm.

“Keyleth.” 

The word came out of her mouth as it was truly formed; instead of filtered through a borrowed shape. It rumbled with the resonance of her properly grand ribs. It was strange to be able to speak without her throat aching from the constant irritation of open sores. It was hard to focus, and lethargy twined itself to a bone-deep exhaustion that went beyond her usual malise. It felt like she has been dreaming. Not a particularly excellent dream. Just a long stretch of time with human-shaped hands wrapped around the neck of the curr that stole her health as her skin slowly blackened and flaked away. The halfling, ever present, stared up into her face. The muscles on her forearms and the tendons of her hands cord-tight and never yielding as she choked Raishan in answer.

Fingers came uncomfortably close to her eye and a loud snap pulled her attention. Shifting her head incrementally, she glanced at the source of the sound.

Keyleth had come closer.

There were differences, and her mind started to catalogue them quickly to process later. The circlet she wore before has been replaced by adornment comparable to the racks on the stags of the feywild. Scars sat tight and pale on her arms, a smattering showing on her legs. The mantle of autumnal foliage on her shoulders vibrated with magic. 

Age was a hard thing to pin on a druid and have it sit correctly. However, Raishan knew that time had passed. Time that should not have gone unaccounted for in her notice. Even if she had been ill, or unconscious, usually she understood the turn of seasons. 

Where before there was a simpering girl-child snapping her teeth ineffectually at an apex predator, now a seasoned woman watched with absolute resolution in her power and control. It was a change and a threat. It was as intriguing as much as it was frightening. Raishan hated being frightened.

One must never, ever show fear in the face of something that might attack.

“Are you stupid or just groggy?” Keyleth arched a brow at her. “Show me some of that keen wit you are so _very_ proud of.”

“I don’t feel inclined to indulge you.” Rattling her scales, Raishan tracked Keyleth’s position near her snout. Weight pressed at her eyes and it would be _so very easy_ to close them again. The temptation warred with equal weight to the parts of her that howled not to turn her back to an enemy. 

“That is unfortunate. Because you will, regardless of your feelings.”

As much as things changed, they did tend to stay the same, didn’t they?

“Where are we?” Raishan asked.

“An island.”

“Of which there are more than one.” Raishan tried to keep her tone level. Letting her temper rise never achieved anything productive with the sanctimonious creature yelling close to her ear. 

“We are near the Lucidian coast.” Keyleth said.

The crystalline tang of magic made much more sense in context. Energy having nothing to do with the natural world saturated the air and made it heavy and rich with possibility. There was only one island near Drynna that would support vegetation. They were on the island in the middle of Mooren Lake. Idly, she wondered if Keyleth had seen to the Moon Mistress; or if that was something that would have to be dealt with. 

“Fair enough. Why are we here and what has happened?”

“Oh, you don’t remember? You died.” The statement had teeth. 

Further flashes of the fight lit up her memories like fireflies against the ink-black of the night. 

The ghost stealing her breath, making her muscles ache and slowing her down. The frantic hope of drilling the truth from the bones of the Cinder King and fashioning him a puppet for long play. The moment where all of her most jealously kept prizes were stripped from her -- her words and thoughts and in the wake of their absence the arrival of pain and fury. 

 

“And now here we are, druid. Why have you called me back when you took such obvious pleasure in ensuring my fall?” Growling, Raishan pushed her forebody up, rising from the leaves. A few sprinkled off of her snout to flutter to the ground. 

Keleth observed her rise. “You and I have unfinished business.” 

Thoroughly inclined to disagree, Raishan twitched her wings to see if they were sound or if the vanes had been torn. If they had been, being aloft would be burning agony. If the former were the case, she would endure it. Pain and she had been long companions and she was accustomed to its presence until she could banish it for good. If she could get away from the druid, it would be well worth enduring again. 

Keyleth’s voice cut sharp across her assessments. 

“I wouldn’t try to leave this discussion early. It’s rude. If you push it, I will take great pleasure in tying you down.” She grinned with her blunt human teeth. “Grounding dragons is a specialty of mine.” 

“Tell me what you would have of me.” Parting her mouth and showing her fangs, Raishan purred. “And do make sure to tell me how you propose to ensure I do it.” 

The stupid, animal part of her was afraid. The only reasonable response would be to then taunt the druid. 

“Wren, would you come out please?” 

Movement disturbed the bushes nearby, and from them stepped a tiny human. Humanoid. Raishan amended the descriptor after a moment’s study. There was the sparkle of magic around the bird-child that Keyleth put in front of her. 

The youth regarded her with dark, serious eyes that were half shrouded by hair as black as a raven’s wing. There was quite a lot of it in the child’s face, free of a tie and left to be as wild as they appeared to be. There was more than a passing resemblance to the druid’s lover. Perhaps this one was the death-paladin’s get. Then again, most humanoids looked vaguely similar, with variable coloration and stature. 

“What am I to do with this slip of a person?” The logic of the situation was eluding her. 

“You are going to escort Wren to Vasselheim, to go to the Raven Queen’s temple.” 

Into the heart of the Platinum Dragon’s stronghold. With all of the eager knights with their gleaming pale armor and sharp weapons. It would be suicide. Or a very long-range second murder. 

“ _Oh_?” 

“You heard me. Or would you like me to repeat it using smaller words?” 

Raishan forced the spines on her neck to be flat and still. Humans never properly appreciated a good frill-flare and all of the offense that it implied. “You still haven’t answered the second part of my question, Keyleth. How do you plan on making me do this?” 

There were options here. Depending on the answer and depending on how long she had to assess. If the miserable fleshy things had indeed killed her, then they would have had to have used a true resurrection in order to bring her together again. 

The naturally acidic, highly reactive state of her own body without the sickness to compound its decay would have ensured that her bones were dissolved and her physical leavings soaked into the earth of her killing field. The curse’s addition to that process guranteed that there would have been nothing useful left. The sands on that island would never be the same, and the thought gave her a glimmer of pleasure. 

For the girl-child to have matured into the force currently detailing her second death, years must have passed. She would have finished her Aramente and ascended to a position of leadership. To build her anew, to animate her again, that took spellcraft that Keyleth as Raishan had known her could not have accomplished. That meant that Keyleth of the present was dangerous. Raishan never made a habit of ignoring danger. Best instead to plan around it and be pleasantly surprised by the incompetence of those that she studied. 

Wren broke the tension before her enemy answered her question. “I don’t need a dying dragon to escort me to go to Raven’s Rest.” 

Their voice was a middle-timber, different than Vex’alia’s mocking lilt; but there was a tight directness to it that did not speak of Vax’ildan. Wren showed more of the grim directness of the de Rolo heir, which meant that they might be marginally more tolerable. Mannerisms could be traded through families easily as blood. 

Showing admirable restraint, Keyleth turned to face Wren, keeping Raishan in her periphery.

“I think that you do. We discussed this, and you agreed. Do you have doubts?” 

The seriousness melted incrementally from her tone. “You don’t have to if you don’t think that this is something that you can do. There is no shame in feeling overwhelmed and recognizing that fact.” 

Raishan swallowed a chuckle -- it was hypocritical advice and the world was seldom forgiving enough to allow for it. 

The iron-straightness of the teen’s back doubled. “I’m not a child, Archdruid. I can do this. I don’t need the dragon to protect me. It’s going to be the other way around, isn’t it?” 

Raishan did not swallow her incredulous snort in time. A failing from being sleep addled. Neither party looked in her direction and she did not know if she ought to feel offended. 

“I doubt that the dragon would see it that way.” Keyleth raised a brow. “It needs to be done. Can you do it?” 

Wren faced her with no hesitation. “You knew the answer when you chose me to do it, didn’t you? It’s always been said that adventure calls those that are willing to hear it.” 

What a cocky little shit. Raishan folded her forelegs and rested her snout on them, listening to the other ambient noises of the island. Tiny animals shifting around in the brush that possibly could be compelled to spy and work for her, the slow rain of leaves off the trees whispered down. Keyleth snapped her fingers at her and Raishan pointedly slipped her eyes closed. 

“Gonna need your input here. Or at least half of your attention, unless you want to go back to being dead.” 

Raishan sighed slowly, her throat starting to itch with the beginnings of what would become raw pain. “I have... doubts that you would do that. Given the cost and effort of raising me, your errand is more urgent than you are elaborating.” 

Compulsion spun through her mind and her head raised without her intent. Internally cursing herself for not counter-spelling, Raishan turned to look at the pair. The smarmy look on Keyleth’s face would have to be wiped away soon -- preferably through great stress and loss on her part from problems that would take years to untangle. Now alive, Raishan had the leisure to start making those sorts of plans. For now, she would pay attention and see what the little things wanted. 

“Now that we are all paying attention.” Keyleth looked between them. “You will be leaving tomorrow. The only time-limit that you have is Winter’s Crest.”

Wren nodded, folding their arms over their waist. “Any other errands you want to tack onto the trip?” 

Keyleth chuckled. “Not particularly. I think that is enough. When you are done, then come back. We’ll decide what to do with... her. When that time comes.” 

Raishan tapped a fore-claw into a pile of leaves, watching them scatter. “How do you intend for me to pass among your people without a battle?” 

Keyleth bared her blunt teeth at her, grinning in a pale imitation of the stone-giant’s smile. 

“You are terribly clever. I’m sure you’ll think of something. I have things to attend to for the evening. If the two of you need anything, Wren knows where to find me. For now, I’ll let you two get to know each other.” Dissipating into a mist, the form of Keyleth drifted away and up into the air. 

Now the morsel and she were alone. Raishan slid her glance to them. “I will not kill you, foremost because I am tired, and to a lesser degree because I assume it would have unpleasant consequences.” 

Wren observed her in return, plain about their process. Their eyes were dark like two smooth pebbles on the beach. Unlike everyone that Raishan assumed they had grown up with, Wren did not speak to fill the silence. It was an admirable if annoying trait. One did not learn much about possible targets if they refused to divulge any parts of themselves. Best then to stick to shared business. 

“Why did the Archdruid pull me from death?” 

Wren shook their head. “There were reasons. I’m sure that we’ll arrive to them in time. It’s something that she always says to me -- answers come in time. And I know you’re not going to kill me. It would be a waste of effort.” 

They jammed a boot into the fragrant piles of falling leaves. There was rot and decay in this place, but nothing about it was foul. It smelled autumnal. Flashes of red, orange and yellow trickled down in Raishan’s periphery -- like cinders. 

“How do you propose to keep me from killing everyone and flying away?” Raishan asked. 

A sadistic light shimmered in Wren’s eyes. “You could try it and find out.” 

There had been preparations made, then. Whispering a detection spell and centering herself, Raishan found runes carved into her scales, along her claws, and branded into her skin with ash. It pulsed and throbbed, added pain on top of the familiar aches. The claws could be filed. Scales pulled -- it would be tender and painful, but there was the possibility of it. The branding would test her; the thought of peeling her own flesh off dizzied and disturbed her. Such measures were not necessary yet -- she would have to find the length of her tethers and test them before deciding. 

“I think I will pass. If you are not willing to disclose what has happened, I will assume that there have been arcanists at work.” 

“Keyleth said that you are smart” Wren nodded slowly. “You are going to have to sleep here for a day or two before you’re not useless.” The young one hooked their thumbs into their belt, leaning back onto their heels. “What do you eat?”

“Archdruids,” Raishan grumbled. “Deliciously prepared veal. Birds. Whatever I must. Will you be in charge of my care?” There was a line to walk with the newling and she did not know its shape just yet. Based on the proximity to the she-devil, it was likely Wren was well-poisoned against her from the beginning. Cultivation of trust and favors would have to be a slow thing, and handled with humility. That fact more than most rankled. 

This was not her strong suit. Why should a queen bow her head and be less than what she was at birth? Still, this was how the _nice_ and the _good_ worked. Show your belly, show your throat. Offer all of the soft places with enough truth to make it stick and slowly they would love you. 

“I’ll make sure that you do not starve. I’ll see you tomorrow in the morning, Raishan.” Wren slipped in between the leaves in the way that all of the rogues that she had known in her time did. The soft beat of footsteps stretched out into the distance and then was lost to her. 


End file.
